Keynote Speaker

Due to unforeseen events, Dr. Jennifer Doudna is unable to keynote the 2017 Conference on Cell & Gene Therapy for HIV Cure.

We are honored to announce Carl H. June, MD, as Keynote Speaker for CGT4HIVCure 2017.

Carl H. June, MD

Director of Translational ResearchAbramson Cancer Center

Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies

Richard W. Vague Professor in ImmunotherapyDepartment of Pathology and Laboratory MedicinePerelman School of MedicineUniversity of Pennsylvania

Carl June is currently Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies and Director of Translational Research in the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and is an Investigator of the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute. Dr. June is the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School Of Medicine. He is a graduate of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, 1979. He had graduate training in Immunology and malaria with Dr. Paul-Henri Lambert at the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland in 1978 and 1979, and post-doctoral training in transplantation biology with E. Donnell Thomas and John Hansen at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle from 1983 to 1986. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology. He maintains a research laboratory that studies various mechanisms of lymphocyte activation that relate to immune tolerance and adoptive immunotherapy for cancer and chronic infection.

In 2011, Dr. June’s research team published findings which represented the first successful and sustained demonstration of the use of gene transfer therapy to treat cancer. Clinical trials utilizing this approach, in which patients are treated with genetically engineered versions of their own T cells, are now underway for adults with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and adults and children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Early results in that group show that 90 percent of patients respond to the therapy, and more recently, trials of this approach have begun for patients with other blood cancers and solid tumors including pancreatic cancer, mesothelioma, and the brain cancer glioblastoma. In 2014, it became the first personalized cellular therapy for the treatment of cancer therapy to receive the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s prestigious Breakthrough Therapy designation.

He has published more than 350 manuscripts and is the recipient of numerous prizes and honors, including election to the Institute of Medicine in 2012, the William B Coley award, the Richard V Smalley Memorial Award from the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, the AACR-CRI Lloyd J. Old Award in Cancer Immunology, the Hamdan Award for Medical Research Excellence, and the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize. In 2014, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. June's Keynote will address advancements in T cell therapies for HIV cure efforts, and the emerging intersection between curative treatments for cancer and HIV.

PLENARY SPEAKERS

Chief, Division Allergy and ImmunologyProfessor of Pediatrics and of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine

Director, Program for Cell Enhancement and Technologies for Immunotherapy (CETI)

Children’s National Health SystemThe George Washington University School of Medicine and Health SciencesWashington, DC

Catherine Bollard received her medical degree at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. She is Board certified both in Pediatrics and Hematology. She worked both in New Zealand and London, England before moving to Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in 2000 where she was Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine and Immunology and the Director of the Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Center Pediatric Lymphoma Program. In August 2013, she moved to Children’s National and The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, DC. She is currently Chief, Division of Allergy and Immunology, Professor of Pediatrics and of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine and Director of the Program for Cell Enhancement and Technologies for Immunotherapy (CETI). She is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and is President of the International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT). She is on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT) and Chairs the Non Hodgkins Lymphoma committee of the Children’s Oncology Group. She is an Associate Editor for the journals Blood and Cytotherapy and is a member of the NCI Clinical Oncology Study Section and is a member of the Cellular, Tissues and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Her bench and translational research focuses on improving outcomes for patients after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation as well as the development of novel cell therapies for viral diseases and hematologic malignancies.

Guido Silvestri, MD

Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Comparative Pathology

Professor and Vice-Chair for Research, Department of Pathology and Laboratory MedicineEmory University School of Medicine

Chair of the Division of Microbiology & ImmunologyYerkes National Primate Research Center

Since 1993, Dr. Silvestri has been involved in studies of AIDS pathogenesis, prevention, and therapy, mostly using non-human primate models of SIV and SHIV infection, with particular focus on comparative studies of pathogenic and non-pathogenic primate lentiviral infections. Dr. Silvestri is currently the principal investigator of several NIH grants, including an R37 MERIT award, and he is involved in both the Consortium for AIDS vaccine studies in non-human primates, the CHAVI-ID, and the CARE Martin Delaney collaboratorium. He has authored or co-authored 216 peer-reviewed publications in this field, including some in the highest impact journals (Cell, Science, Nature, Nature Medicine, etc). His work has been quoted over 15,000 times, and has been presented in plenary sessions at all the major HIV/AIDS Conferences (CROI, IAS, Keystone, etc). Dr. Silvestri is an Editor of the Journal of Virology, an Associate Editor of PLoS Pathogens, and a past-Editor of the Journal of Immunology. He also serves in the Editorial Board of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Clinical Microbiology Reviews. He served as Chairman or Standing Member in several study sections at the NIH, CIHR, ANRS, AmFAR, and the European Commission. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Conference on Retrovirus and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), of the International AIDS Society Scientific Working Group on HIV Cure, and will be Co-Chair of the 9th International AIDS Conference in Paris, July 2017.